A growing body of research suggests that the quantity and quality of structural inputs of education and healthcare services such as infrastructure, classroom and medical supplies, and even teacher and medical training are largely irrelevant if teachers and healthcare providers do not exert the...

Central America has come a long way both in terms of economic and political stability. Increasingly the region is focusing on implementing productivity-enhancing reforms as well as supporting reductions in poverty and inequality. This report analyzes recent trends in public social spending in...

Many Roma are among the poorest and most vulnerable Europeans, facing poverty, exclusion, and discrimination. In European Union member countries in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) with substantial Roma populations, inequalities between Roma and non-Roma start early and are striking. Some of...

Undertaken by the ASER Center of Pratham, this study explores a set of interrelated factors that influence how teachers teach. Designed as a series of data collection exercises that were conducted between July 2013 and December 2014, the study covered 400 schools and tracked more than 2,200...

Ukraine’s economic progress since its independence in the early 1990s has been uneven, in part due to the slow pace of reforms, unfavorable demographic factors, and low productivity. One of the key factors limiting success is the inadequacy of the skills of Ukraine’s workforce with the needs...

This book, produced jointly by the World Bank, the University of California, Berkeley, and the WHO, aims to provide decision-makers at sub-national, national, regional and global levels with additional insights into how to address their workforce challenges rather than describe them. In order to...

The Targeted Social Assistance Program of Georgia is a last resort social program that is considered a best practice among proxy-means-tested (PMT) programs. It achieves high targeting accuracy for a relatively high level poverty incidence. In 2013, the Government of Georgia embarked in the...

This book represents a systematic review of the documented impacts of programs aimed at fostering socio-emotional skills in developed and developing countries. It uses a life-cycle approach to organize the findings from rigorous evaluations of more than 80 programs. This includes programs for...

Although the Latin American region has shown an impressive growth in educational attainment over the past two decades, that education has failed to yield expected benefits. A mounting body of research and policy debates argues that the quantity of education is not an adequate metric of human...

Investing in skills has risen to the top of the policy agenda today in rich and poor countries alike. The World Bank supports its partner countries on this agenda in multiple ways: development finance, research and analysis, global knowledge exchange, and technical assistance. This report was...